"Any animal that has a low reproductive rate is going to be sensitive to new sources of mortality," said James Fraser, an eagle specialist at Virginia Tech who has been studying their reproductive patterns since 1974.
Golden eagles between 2 and 3 years old are especially tempting targets for hunters and trappers because their black and white feathers are most prized by collectors, ceremonial dancers and religious practitioners.
To honor Indian treaties, the Fish and Wildlife Service will issue a permit for eagle feathers to anyone with a government-issued Certificate of Indian Birth, but such permits are not frequently checked.
Also, many Native Americans receive feathers as gifts, but the National Eagle Repository does not require that they get a permit. Nothing distinguishes a gift feather from one acquired illegally.
Sam Jojola, a special agent with the Fish and Wildlife Service, said that checking permits would take too long for the fewer than 200 federal wildlife agents in the field.
"I'm more interested in the most egregious wildlife violations we can find," Jojola said.
Native Americans retained the right to hunt eagles well into the 20th century. After the government banned eagle hunts, it created the permit system and the repository to allow Indians to maintain their religious practices.
But the permit system and the repository are under attack in the Utah case, which will be argued before a U.S. District Court judge in Salt Lake City this summer.
The defendants, who are being prosecuted by the federal government for possession of eagle feathers, are Utah residents Samuel R. Wilgus Jr., Raymond Hardman, and Christopher and Faye Beath. Wilgus is a member of a Christian sect called the Native American Church; Hardman and the Beaths have spent much of their lives on the remote Uintah and Ouray Reservation, taking part in local Native American ceremonies. None is Native American.
In separate cases in the 1990s, Wilgus and Hardman were found guilty of illegally possessing eagle feathers. Each appealed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which in August 2002 ordered their cases reheard by the district court to determine whether the government was violating a federal religious freedom law by allowing only members of officially recognized Indian tribes to have feathers. The Beaths were charged in 2000 with illegally possessing eagle parts.
